A great burst of laughter shakes the Burgundian village when the inhabitants learn of the creation of an anti-alcohol league. Pimpin Desbordes, heavy drinker and merry prankster, thus goes to war against the initiative of his brother, the prudish commissioner Desbordes, with the support of all the winegrowers in the surrounding area. As for the daughter of the local tavern keeper, she gives her heart and her hand - the heart has its reasons - to the kind Pierre Morau, representative of a tonic drink, the koku-kolu and the whole village sinks into an euphoric drunkenness.
A vehicle for singer Line Renaud ,whose husband ,Louis Gasté ,wrote the score for it is almost a musical; the action takes place circa 1885 ,for the President of the Republic is Jules Grévy ; the spoof on Coke (Koku-kolu) is odd for the American soda was unknown in France at the time :it appeared in 1933 and became really popular in the fifties and mainly in the sixties ;but it provides the movie with one of its wittiest lines when Suzanne Dehelly asks: "shall we use it to do our brasses?".The story is a heavy-handed farce but the songs are pleasant: the arrival of the soda rep in the village, the duet with him and Renaud (plus a radio set)which in its modest way, predates Demy's sung dialogues in "les parapluies de Cherbourg"; the infectious "le jupon de Lison", sung in a washing-place .
But to try to replace wine by a soda which makes everybody pucker,it's an almost impossible task in Burgundy .
